Monday, July 12, 2010

Lapis Lazuli: "The Whole Blue Sky"

Lapis lazuli -- that exotic and redolent substance -- makes an appearance in poems by three "major" poets: "Lapis Lazuli" by W. B. Yeats, "The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed's Church" by Robert Browning ("Some lump, ah God, of lapis lazuli"), and "This Solitude of Cataracts" by Wallace Stevens ("To be a bronze man breathing under archaic lapis"). But I humbly submit that Yeats, Browning, and Stevens cannot hold a candle to Andrew Young:

The Nest

Four blue stones in this thrush's nest
I leave, content to make the best
Of turquoise, lapis lazuli
Or for that matter of the whole blue sky.